THE PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION ACT

CUSTOMER PRIVACY NOTICE

The Terms & conditions were last updated on August 9, 2022, and applies to citizens and legal permanent residents of South Africa.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and to ensure that your personal information is collected and used properly, lawfully, and transparently. The Protection of Personal Information Act (“POPIA”) creates the following rights for You as a South African citizen and / or data subject:

• Right to be notified about collection and processing of personal information;
• Right to access personal information;
• Right to request correction of personal information;
• Right to request deletion of personal information;
• Right to object to the processing of personal information;
• Right not to have personal information processed for the purpose of direct marketing by means of unsolicited electronic communications;
• Right to not be subject to a decision which results in legal circumstances based solely on the basis of the automated processing;
• Right to complain to the Information Regulator;
• Right to effect judicial remedy.

Definition of Personal Information

According to the Act “personal information” means information relating to an identifiable, living, natural person and where it is applicable, an identifiable, existing juristic person. Further to the POPI Act (“POPIA”), we also include the following items as personal information:

• All addresses including residential, postal and email addresses;
• Contact number for deliveries, including cellular phones and landlines;

The Information we Collect

We collect and process your personal information mainly to contact you for the purposes of fulfilling your order requests (order placement and delivery), understanding your requirements and needs (contact us or request for quotes), and delivering services accordingly. For this purpose, we will collect contact details and shipping details, including your name, address, and telephone details.

We collect information directly from you where you provide us with your personal details. Where possible, we will inform you what information you are required to provide to us and what information is optional.

Website usage information may be collected using “cookies” which allows us to collect standard internet visitor usage information.

While you visit our site, we track:

• Products you have viewed: we will use this to, for example, show you products you have recently viewed;
• Location, IP address and browser type: we will use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping;
• Shipping address: we will ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you the order!

We also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you are browsing our site. Whether you use the website purely for information purpose, or decide to register and purchase something from us, we collect the following data which your browser transmits to our server.

• IP address;
• Date and time of the query;
• Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT);
• Content of the request (specific page);
• Access status / HTTP status code;
• Data volume transferred in each instance;
• Website from which the request originates (browser type);
• Browser;
• User’s operating system and user interface;
• Browser software language and version.

When you purchase from us, we will ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number and optional account information like username and password. We use this information for purposes, such as, to:

• Send you information about your account and order;
• Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints;
• Process payments and prevent fraud;
• Set up your account for our store;
• Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes’
• Improve our store offerings;
• Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them;
• If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we will store order information for 5 (five) years for tax and accounting purposes. This includes your name, email address and billing and shipping addresses.

We will also store comments or reviews if you choose to leave them.

When visitors or you submit a form, we capture the IP Address for spam protection. We also capture the email address and might capture other personal data included in the Form fields.

We DO NOT ask for credit card or payment details, nor do we store these details. Upon selecting your payment method, you will be redirected to one of the trusted payment gateways available in South Africa to process the payment. The payment gateway(s) we use will encrypt through the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS). Your purchase transaction data is stored only if is necessary to complete your purchase transaction. After that is complete, your purchase transaction information is deleted. Payment gateways adhere to these standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover.

How we use Your Information

We will use your personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and agreed with you. In addition, where necessary, your information may be retained for new order, repeat order, legal or research purposes.

For example:

• To gather contact information;
• To confirm and verify your identity or to verify that you are an authorized user for security purposes;
• For the detection and prevention of fraud, crime, money laundering or other malpractice that impact our business directly;
• To conduct market or customer satisfaction research, whereby You have to Opt-In for surveys, reviews, feedback or testimonials, or for statistical analysis;
• For audit and record keeping purposes;
• In connection with legal proceedings.

Disclosure of Information

We may disclose your personal information to our service providers who are involved in the delivery of products and services to you, for example, courier services. We have agreements in place to ensure that they comply with the privacy requirements as required by the Protection of Personal Information Act.

We may also disclose your information:

• Where we have a duty or a right to disclose in terms of law or industry codes;
• Where we believe it is necessary to protect our rights.

For order fulfilment, we share only the minimum information required with third parties who help us provide our orders and store services to you; for example:

• Our Frozen Food Courier Service Provider;
• Our Dry Goods Courier Provider.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. We collect information about you during the checkout process on our store.

Information Security

We are legally obliged to provide adequate protection for the personal information we hold and to stop unauthorized access and use of personal information. We will, on an on-going basis, continue to review our security controls and related processes to ensure that your personal information remains secure.

Our security policies and procedures cover:

• Physical security;
• Computer and network security;
• Access to personal information;
• Secure communications;
• Security in contracting out activities or functions;
• Retention and disposal of information;
• Acceptable usage of personal information;
• Governance and regulatory issues;
• Monitoring access and usage of private information;
• Investigating and reacting to security incidents.

When we contract with third parties, we impose appropriate security, privacy, and confidentiality obligations on them to ensure that personal information that we remain responsible for, is kept secure.

We will ensure that anyone to whom we pass your personal information agrees to treat your information with the same level of protection as we are obliged to.

Your Rights: Access to Information

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

To request your information, use our request form here. Your account must be validated and verified for the request form to work.

Your Rights: Correction of Your Information

You have the right to ask us to update, correct or delete your personal information. To request your information, use our request form here. Your account must be validated and verified for the request form to work. We appreciate it if you would keep your personal information accurate.

Service and Technology Specific Notes

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Here is a list of cookies that we use via WooCommerce. We have listed them here for your information only.

• wp_woocommerce_session_ (review documentation here)
  • woocommerce_cart_hash | session | Helps WooCommerce determine when cart contents / data changes.
  • woocommerce_items_in_cart | session | Helps WooCommerce determine when cart contents / data changes.
  • wp_woocommerce_session_ | 2 days | Contains a unique code for each customer so that it knows where to find the cart data in the database for each customer.
  • woocommerce_recently_viewed| session | Powers the Recent Viewed Products widget.
  • store_notice[notice id] | session| Allows customers to dismiss the Store Notice.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

If your account goes dormant after six months of registration, we automatically delete the account, and you will have to reregister.

Who on our team has access

Members of our team have access to the information you provide us. For example, both Administrators and Shop Managers can access:

• Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
• Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.
• Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

No one in our organization have access to any other information, including payment or financial. We do not capture, nor do we store this information.

Payments Processors

We accept payments through PayFast and Yoco. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayFast or Yoco, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information. You can view the PayFast privacy policy here. No data is shared with WooCommerce.Com in this process.

Third Parties and Technology Partners

We never sell your personal information to any third party. The only third parties that use, collect and / or store your personal data does so to the extent that is necessary to allow them to perform the services they provide to us. These third parties have their own privacy policies and terms of use that you find on their webpages.

Our website is using WordPress and WooCommerce. You can review the privacy policy for WooCommerce by Automattic here, and the WordPress policy here.

We host our site with WPMU DEV, owned and operated by Incsub, LLC. Incsub, LLC provides WordPress and web hosting services via WPMU DEV, CampusPress, and Edublogs. Their privacy policy can be found here. The following services and plugins are used on our website, and may store personal information:

• Defender – IP addresses, content, and user information of all site visitors;
• Forminator – Forms can be used to collect and store all types of information;
• Hustle – Form tool can be used to customize information collected;
• Smush Pro – Image files may contain EXIF data that could identify a user. By default, with Smush Pro enabled, EXIF data is not saved locally, but a setting in the plugin does allow for it to be enabled;
• Hummingbird uses the Stackpath Content Delivery Network (CDN). Stackpath may store web log information of site visitors, including IPs, UA, referrer, Location and ISP info of site visitors for 7 days. Files and images served by the CDN may be stored and served from countries other than your own. Stackpath’s privacy policy can be found here.

The following services and plugins are used on our website, and may add Cookies:

• Beehive;
• Hustle;
• Snapshot Pro;

The following services and plugins require integration with other 3rd party services:

• Forminator Pro: Google reCAPTCHA, HubSpot, Slack, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, Google Sheets, Trello, MailChimp, and AWeber;
• Beehive: Google Analytics;
• Hummingbird: Cloudflare and Stackpath;
• Hustle: reCAPTCHA, Zapier, various email services including MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, GetResponse, Sendy, Mad Mimi, Infusionsoft, Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit, social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Vkontakte, 500px, Houzz, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Email;
• WPMU DEV Dashboard: Mixpanel/Matomo (analytics), LiveChatInc (in dashboard support);
• Defender Pro: Google’s blacklist monitoring;
• The Hub Client: HubSpot.

We use Google reCAPTCHA and Cloudflare Turnstile for spam protection. Their privacy policy can be found here.

We use Twilio Cloud Communications services for Mobile Short Message Services (SMS) and WhatsApp notifications. You can find their privacy policy here.

We use Google Drive and Google Sheets to manage our integration data. Their privacy policy can be found here.

We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products/services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Contact information

This website is owned and operated by Doggy and Kitty Chef (Pty) Ltd.

You may contact us regarding our Privacy Policy through our contact page.